conférence M. Rezac 1er décembre, Paris

[AROUI Jean-Louis]

L'UMR 7023 a le plaisir de vous convier, dans le cadre des séances de son 
séminaire (http://www.umr7023.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article667),

le lundi 1er décembre 2008
10h00-12h00,
C.N.R.S., 59 rue Pouchet, 75017 Paris (métros : Guy Moquet ou Brochant, ligne 
13),  salle 159

à une conférence de Milan Rezac (CNRS, UMR 7023)

intitulée

« Modular architecture: Evidence from "uninterpretable" phi-features »

Résumé :
"Uninterpretable" occurrences of phi-features ("agreement", broadly speaking) 
are explored as window onto the modular architecture of language, 
particularly the character of syntax as a module distinct and autonomous of 
morphophonology (realization) and interpretation. Current models question 
aspects of this modular architecture and the place of uninterpretable phi in 
it: some relegate uninterpretable phi wholly to the realizational 
component(s) outside syntax; some rather reduce the scope of the former and 
so shift much allomorphy to syntax; and some identify the syntactic and 
interpretive components, leaving no place for uninterpretable elements.
Our exploration suggests that the classical conception is on the right track, 
deriving significant generalizations about uninterpretable phi phenomena in 
language. Some of them have the signature expected of morphophonology: 
syntactico-semantic inertness and arbitrariness, and a restriction to 
word-like domains. Here belong some "opaque" cliticization and agreement and 
some analytic-synthetic alternations. By the same criteria, other, 
superficially similar phenomena referring to uninterpretable phi prove to 
belong to syntax. Evidence comes particularly from person-governed 
interactions between arguments, such as the me-lui (Person Case) constraint 
and its "repairs". Thus, the modular separation of syntax and morphophonology 
properly individuates two classes of uninterpretable phi phenomena.
The tools provided by the syntactic class of phenomena also furnish a new tool 
to address the relationship of "interpretable" phi-features on arguments and 
their actual interpretation. Systematic mismatches between these two modules 
surface in fossil (grammaticalized) phi-specifications, metonymy, impostors, 
and fake indexicals. Syntax thus seems autonomous of the expected properties 
of the interpretive component as well as of the realizational one, 
constituting the classical autonomous computational module linking the two.



-- 
Jean-Louis AROUI
Université Paris 8
UFR des Sciences du Langage
2, rue de la liberté
93200 Saint-Denis
FRANCE
http://www.umr7023.cnrs.fr/spip.php?rubrique77
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